The Charlotte News
Friday, February 10, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Francis Case of South Dakota had told a Senate Investigating subcommittee this date that a $2,500 campaign fund offered from a man whom he regarded as a stranger, had sort of taken his "breath away" but that he did not accuse the other man of trying to bribe him. The investigation had been ordered by the Senate after Senator Case had publicly denounced the offer, and the Senator said that the investigation was not of a bribe, because no such allegation had been made, that the question, as he understood it, was whether the offered campaign contribution involved an effort to influence his decision in voting on the natural gas deregulation bill. He said that there had been nothing proposed to him about that matter and nothing had been promised. He said that the contribution by the man had come with no strings attached and that all he had heard or read about it suggested that there were in fact no such strings. The Senator had voted against the bill when the Senate had passed it the previous Monday after a long debate in which opponents contended that it would mean billions of dollars to big oil companies.
Relman Morin, Associated Press political correspondent, in the fourth and last of a series of articles on whether the President would run again, addresses the question in this piece as to who else might run if the President chose not to do so, and that if he did decide to do so, who would be his running mate and how much traveling and campaigning could the President do and what effect a curtailed campaign of the President might have on others seeking political office. Because the President had made warm remarks about Vice-President Nixon, it was believed that the latter had the inside track on achieving the nomination should the President step aside. Nevertheless, many Republican Party leaders were looking elsewhere, with several of them telling Mr. Morin that they thought that Chief Justice Earl Warren would make the strongest candidate, one expressing sorrow that the President had suggested that the Supreme Court and politics did not mix, believing it was a bad mistake with respect to the Chief Justice. But the latter had also said that he would not be a candidate and one of his colleagues on the Court had said that he could not conceive of him changing his mind, as he was dedicated to his current job. Other names which cropped up among Republicans included Senator William Knowland of California, with admirers having placed his name on the ballots in the New Hampshire primary, as well in the Illinois and Alaska primaries, where, according to some, he wanted to test his strength. Another such contender was Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts, of whom it was said that he would run strong in the industrial East, where it was getting tougher for Republicans all the time. Other potential candidates were Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, and former Governor of New York Thomas Dewey, the latter the 1944 and 1948 Republican nominee, continuing to be consulted by party leaders on a frequent basis. Mr. Morin says that Mr. Dewey no longer granted press interviews and would not tell White House correspondents what he had discussed with the President the previous week. There were people in the party who wanted to see him as the vice-presidential candidate should the President run again, as there were people who would be afraid that the President could not last another full term, causing the vice-presidential nominee to be more important than usual. But friends of Mr. Dewey had said that he had told them that the ticket would continue to be the President and Mr. Nixon, that the latter had done "a grand job, and they won't dump him." He reportedly had said when asked whether, if he were asked to be the running mate, he would accept, that it would be the toughest decision he ever had to make. Mr. Morin indicates that there were several reasons why there was talk of dumping Mr. Nixon from the ticket, which included his age, 43, the possible effect of Democratic attacks which had been centered on him since the President's illness, the possibility that he had alienated some independent voters by his tough talk about the Democrats in the 1954 midterm elections, and other reasons. The physical ability of the President to campaign was a major factor for Republican leaders, with some saying he would not need to travel and speak as much as he had in 1952, when he had covered 35,000 miles in just three months. But Senator Knowland disagreed, saying that one could not run for the presidency with one or two television broadcasts from the White House, that if it were done that way, a lot of Republican candidates for governor, the Senate and the House would fall by the wayside. Mr. Morin concludes that there were many questions and that Washington awaited the answers with mounting impatience.
A three or four-man subcommittee of HUAC would conduct hearings on March 12, 13, and 14 in Charlotte, according to a spokesman for Representative Francis Walter, chairman of the Committee. The spokesman said that the members of the subcommittee would not be named until shortly before the hearings and that he could not reveal the names of witnesses to be called or the nature of the hearings, but that they would generally deal with Communist Party activities in North Carolina, and possibly other Southern states, and that they came as a result of testimony in the trial of Junius Scales in Greensboro the previous April, during which three Government witnesses had named more than 30 persons they believed to be Communists or engaged in Communist activity within the state, none of whom had been called as witnesses at the trial.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that sources close to the Committee had said that a letter to a man who had been named during the Scales trial as having been a Communist sympathizer while at UNC after World War II, plus press interviews might have tipped some alleged Communists who might be called as witnesses, some of whom might want to make themselves unavailable. Subpoenas had not been served on all possible witnesses and those who did not want to participate might have been warned by the announcement the previous day, as carried by the newspaper, that the witness, a faculty member at Campbell College, had received a subpoena from the Committee.
Emery Wister of The News tells of a check having been made on the parking spaces at the Municipal Airport to determine whether there were enough spaces for those who drove to the field to catch a plane, whether the spaces were being taken up by people working at the airport and whether many persons left their cars at the field for long periods of time, and if so, where they parked. He provides some answers to these challenging questions and some suggested solutions.
In Charlotte, vandals had poured
liver mush and milk through the coffee grinder at Harris Supermarket
on South Boulevard in a break-in the previous night, and eggs had
been broken on the floor and thrown against the walls, with candy and
cigarette counters having been the object of pilfering, and jars of
candy knocked from shelves and strewn about the store-front. The
vandals apparently had been teenagers or young children. Little had
been stolen in the break-in, but two soft drink machines had been
pried open and about $66 in change had been taken, with about $500 in
total damage. Entry had been gained by breaking a plate glass window,
and another glass in the rear of the store had also been broken.
Candy and milk were found scattered outside the building. (Whether they may have been after Candy Barr is not revealed—but, surely, there is more to come regarding this hot news story
Near Matthews, in the vicinity of Charlotte, a man was killed just before noon this date when his pickup truck had collided with a tractor-trailer.
Donald MacDonald of The News
tells of a tractor-trailer loaded with 400 crates of eggs valued at
$14,000 having smashed into a bridge on Mount Holly Road during the
early morning hours of this date, but that the bridge, not the eggs,
had gotten the worst of the bargain. Police reported that none of the
exteriors of the egg crates had appeared to be damaged, but that
until the crates were opened, it would not be known whether the eggs
In Toulouse, France, jazzman Sidney
Bechet
That kid named Elvis i' down 'eya in town at de Ca'lina t'day, t'maw, t'night and t'maw. You can get in 'ey faw 85 cent or 50 cent as child. You betta get on down 'eya. He'll leave t'maw.
On the editorial page, "Smog Control: The Eyes Have It" finds that the scientific evidence being gathered by the new air pollution engineer, Charles Frost, on his smokescope and other equipment was bearing out the opinions of many local residents who believed that there was something in the air which was an irritant to their eyes and noses.
During two early morning hours on Wednesday, he had found with his air testing equipment that Charlotte's air was 82 percent polluted. It suggests that had the finding been made earlier, it might have lessened the City Council's indecision on the smog control program. The scientific evidence proved that the problem had not been exaggerated by those who were advocating for clean air in the city, proving that it was polluted and unhealthy and had to be cleaned up.
"A Campaign Pledge Well Remembered" finds that the promise by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina that he would resign his Senate seat and run anew in the Democratic primary, having so pledged in 1954 when he ran as a write-in candidate after no party primary was held in the wake of the death of the original party nominee, incumbent Senator Burnet Maybank, with former Governor Thurmond winning handily over the candidate selected by the Democratic executive committee in the state to be the party nominee.
Senator Thurmond had won a full six-year term and was under no legal obligation to resign and enter the primary, and it finds that it spoke well for his integrity that he intended to keep his pledge, a decision which it believes was in the public interest.
"Give Foreign Policy a New Flexibility" finds that unanimous approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the President's nomination of Robert Bowie as Assistant Secretary of State was hopeful evidence that the China lobby was dwindling in its power. Mr. Bowie had been under attack because it had been rumored that he favored U.S. recognition of Communist China and its admission to the U.N., when actually he had not advocated those things at all, had merely urged that the question not be subjected to blind, unreasoning resolution, and that the country's Far Eastern policy be flexible enough to serve the best interests of the country at any particular time.
As chief of the State Department's policy planning staff, Mr. Bowie had not always completely agreed with Secretary of State Dulles, but had demonstrated a probing mind with good judgment and common sense, which the Government needed.
China lobby supporters of Chiang Kai-shek feared that he would find in the future that the U.S. interests were served by recognition of Communist China and would then say so. The piece foresees that he would and that if he thought so, he should.
It had been announced during the week that Mr. Bowie had testified before the Foreign Relations Committee that he opposed recognition of Communist China under all of the existing conditions. Senator William Knowland, who had taken a dim view of Mr. Bowie and was one of the strongest supporters of the China lobby, had bowed to pressure for realism and promised not to fight the nomination, with other potential opposition also unlikely to materialize further.
It finds it a return to sanity and urges that the full Senate confirm Mr. Bowie without further delay and also listen to his ideas regarding a dynamic foreign policy, indicating that the need for flexibility and reason rather than stubbornness was needed.
"No Spikes" says that Connie Mack, 93, had not seemed old enough to die, that his life had been totally involved with baseball, which suggested sunshine, vigor and youth, such that it had come to think of him as indestructible. It regards it as a shame that he did not have the strength to make it through one more season of baseball, that it was not fitting for him to have died in winter, without his spikes on.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "The Man behind William Shakespeare", tells of scholars having speculated for the previous hundred years or more on whether William Shakespeare had actually written the plays and poems ascribed to him, with the most common alternatives being Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and the playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe. The theories that he did not write the plays and poems grew from the notion that he did not possess the requisite education and classical learning to do so. There was no manuscript indisputably written in his handwriting and he had come from the yeoman class in Stratford, not a courtly family, and had not attended Cambridge for his education. Thus, people had concluded that someone else had to have written the plays and poems for him.
As a result, permission had been granted in England to open the tomb of Thomas Walsingham in a County Kent church to see whether Christopher Marlowe had actually been the playwright, to determine whether Mr. Walsingham had arranged for another man to have been killed in the place of Marlowe in the tavern fight in which the latter putatively had been murdered, on the theory that Marlowe then would have been able to write the plays and poems in seclusion under an alias, that of the bumpkin actor Shakespeare.
Scholars who supported that theory believed that when Mr. Walsingham had died, he had carried to his grave evidence of the deception, and that by opening his tomb and examining the bodies, proof of that proposition might be found.
It predicts that nothing would be found, as there was no evidence in the published plays and poems of Mr. Marlowe that they had been written by the same person who had authored the Shakespeare plays, with ample evidence to the contrary. Mr. Marlowe had been a fine, sometimes even great dramatist, but had not reached the level of Shakespeare. It posits that when nothing would be found in the tomb to confirm that theory, that some of the adherents to the theory might abandon the quest, but that most would simply shrug and look for some other form of proof, as facts were unimportant to such fanciful theories.
"One thing is certain: If spirits walk the earth, the ghost of William Shakespeare will surely be on hand at old St. Nicholas Church at Chiselhurst, County Kent, to watch the goings-on when the graves are opened. No one would have enjoyed the ghost-writer school of Shakespearean scholarship more than the author of The Tempest."
It was actually that kid, Elvis, all along...
Drew Pearson finds that the more one studied the campaign contributions to the Republican and Democratic parties, the more one had to admire the courage of Senator Francis Case of South Dakota for speaking out against the gas and oil lobby, as well recognize the importance of expanding the probe of gas and oil contributions, as proposed by Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, plus the importance of Washington Post publisher Philip Graham's proposal, to take political money out of the hands of the lobbies and raise it in small amounts from the general public. He indicates that to obtain the real picture of the oil and gas lobby, one had to remember that it had been active for a long time, an example of that activity having been the 27.5 percent oil depletion allowance. That tremendous tax break also explained how the gas and oil lobby had so much money to spend to influence Congress.
He finds that the political money spent by the lobby could be divided into two parts, donations from old, established companies, which were chiefly made to Republicans, and donations from wildcatters, which had once gone to Democrats, but now went to support a lot of Republicans.
The major oil and gas companies had always backed Republicans, with a few minor exceptions, such as Phillips Petroleum, which had a silent partnership with Democratic Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. The Rockefellers of Standard Oil, the Pews of Sun Oil, and the Mellons of Gulf Oil were among some of the largest contributors to the Republican Party. He provides the breakdown, as an example, of the Rockefeller family contributions, totaling $85,000, for General Eisenhower in 1952, with several family members putting up sums no greater than $11,000, including Nelson Rockefeller, who had contributed $9,000. Such was the manner of contribution also by the other wealthy families.
Walter Lippmann discusses the violence and rioting at the University of Alabama in connection with the admission the previous week of the first black student as an undergraduate, Autherine Lucy, and the subsequent decision during this week by the University to suspend her temporarily for her own safety, following a situation in which a mob of persons were yelling "kill her" as they surrounded the car in which she was riding with a University official, who confirmed that they were afraid for their safety and that he was afraid that the mob would in fact kill Ms. Lucy. Ms. Lucy, meanwhile, was seeking an order from the Federal District Court for her readmission to the school.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that on the preceding Tuesday, in Los Angeles, at a meeting of black voters, former Governor Adlai Stevenson had been asked whether, as President, he would, if necessary, use the Army to enforce integration in the schools, and he had responded that he would not, an answer which Mr. Lippmann believes the only conceivable one for a responsible public man. He finds it ominous that the question would have been put to him at all, demonstrating the danger and how near to violence the situation had become.
He tells of Alabama Governor Jim Folsom having stood by and allowed a surrender to lawless force in Tuscaloosa, which would only incite and provoke a demand for use of lawful force.
He finds that while some had been considering use of a moderate approach in response to Brown v. Board of Education, the situation at the University of Alabama showed that there was no way to deal with such a dangerous situation unless moderate people, backed by the great moderate majority of the American people, were able to take the lead. It was clear that the Supreme Court decision had to be implemented, but it could only occur through the consent of the people who had to live with it. He suggests that the principle embodied in the implementing decision had been that a way had to be found between the mob violence in Alabama, insisting on preservation of absolute segregation, and those Northern politicians who sought Federal coercion to bring about immediate desegregation. The Court had called for a moderate course in which the local school districts would formulate plans for desegregation, which would then be put before the Federal district courts for adjudication as to whether they were reasonable in accomplishing desegregation "with all deliberate speed", as required by the Brown implementing decision.
Mr. Lippmann suggests that it was easier to accomplish integration at the graduate and professional schools than among teenagers, either in high schools or in the undergraduate studies at the higher educational level. He suggests that the country would understand the difficulty and would be disposed to feel that the Southern states were within the spirit of the Constitution if, as many were already doing, they tried to make integration work at the higher educational levels.
He states that as another reason why the violence surrounding the case of Ms. Lucy, who wanted to attend college to become a librarian, had been such a setback to law and to good sense.
A letter writer from Lancaster, S.C., indicates that as a transplanted Yankee who hoped to reach an understanding of the South, he had been badly discouraged by a recent letter of February 7, in which a fellow resident of Lancaster had exhorted Southerners to show profound respect for "Dixie", the Confederate National Anthem. He says that during his benighted Yankee days, "Dixie" was to him a rousing American song which recalled all of the fire and gallantry of the Old South, that he had shown more than respect for it, had positive enthusiasm for it, particularly when sung in far-off places such as Budapest or Bratislava. Since he had moved to the South, it had been suggested to him that the song had been written by a Yankee and first sung in 1859 in New York City, and he had even heard that the term "Dixie" originally referred to the southern end of Manhattan Island, and so wonders how someone could become profoundly respectful about a thing like that. He had also read that the Confederate National Anthem was not "Dixie" but rather "The Bonnie Blue Flag", first sung in New Orleans in 1861, honoring a blue flag with a single white star, a flag never officially adopted by the Confederacy, and confesses being in a quandary therefore as to what a good Southerner ought do with his profound respect.
A letter from Harry Golden replies to a letter printed two days earlier from a doctor in Hickory, regarding the slavery question and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's decision in the infamous Dred Scott case, indicating that the previous writer's rendition of it had to be challenged so that readers would not accept the doctor's version as more than something based on his imagination and personal interpretation. The letter writer's principal argument had been that since blacks had not been mentioned in the Constitution, the founders had the idea that they should be sent back to Africa at some more convenient time, with the previous writer quoting Patrick Henry's great speech on liberty, the writer having wondered why such an honest man as Mr. Henry would have made such a positive declaration unless he had been certain that blacks in America would be sent home. Mr. Golden finds it hard to follow the previous writer's logic, that the speech by Patrick Henry had been in defiance of the oppression of King George III, not in relation to slavery, and, furthermore, there was no such concept as "being sent back" under the Constitution or before the Constitution. Even in the time of Patrick Henry, over half of the black slaves were already native-born. He suggests that the doctor had confused the idea of "being sent back" with the history of abolition in England, initiated by early Methodists of England and fought for with a tenacity of purpose which still had no parallel in religious or social action, led by William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, who made it fashionable for upper-middle-class ladies to sign all of their letters with the words: "Abolish the Human Slave Traffic." Soon, British gunboats had patrolled the African coast and had taken the slave ships as prizes, the captain of the gunboat sometimes sentencing the master and crew of the captured vessel and taking the ship as a forfeit, returning the blacks aboard to Sierra Leone on the African coast, where they set up local councils of government, each according to his prior clan identification. He says that the idea proposed by the doctor that the founding fathers had not been concerned with blacks was completely in error, that the issue was constantly on their minds, and that they had faced the decision of slavery on the basis that either there would be no provision in the Constitution abolishing it or they would run the risk that the Southern states would not ratify it. Mr. Golden believes that every patriotic black person in the country would probably agree, that faced with the clear-cut alternative, the founding fathers had acted wisely. The Northern delegates had agreed with the idea that the words "slave" or "slavery" would not appear in the Constitution, and while many of the delegates believed that they had paid a high price for union, they decided to leave it to a future generation for resolution. Mr. Golden indicates that Chief Justice Taney had been a great man and had the doctor quoted at least a portion of the Dred Scott decision, which did not hint at the notion of slaves "being sent back" to Africa, he would have understood that the opinion began with the stated fact that "public opinion" in 1776, at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in 1789, at the ratification of the Constitution, had not permitted a solution to the issue of "that unfortunate race" of black people. Mr. Golden also says that there was no evidence that Thomas Jefferson or James Madison had ever considered the idea of sending blacks back to Africa, that their reluctance to deal with the problem had been based only on the desire to enable ratification of the Constitution and establishment of the nation.
A letter writer from Pittsboro finds that there would be millions of words written about the violence at the University of Alabama recently and that few would reflect the truth of the matter, that it was an ugly situation at best and would be made worse by deliberation. He indicates that it was the culmination of racial animosity which had existed, more or less intensely, for thousands of years throughout the earth, with no single area without it. He suggests that there had been no such "sorry spectacle in the South as that exhibited at the University of Alabama" during the week within the previous 15 years, that many such occurrences had taken place in the North and West, but that the South had been able to avoid "such until busybodies from the outside attempted to take over our social and civil activities." He says that the unanimous majority of the Supreme Court which had decided Brown had consisted of three members from the South, one, Justice Hugo Black, from the Deep South, Alabama, and he recalls that he had risen to "political eminence via the KKK organization", with the Court having "overturned the ruling of every court, including its own for five times", which had spoken on the subject and held that segregation violated the 14th Amendment, that the Court had operated outside its function and authority, had precipitated "a political and social revolution, the end of which is not in sight nor can the cost in blood and treasury be forecast." He rejects the suggestion that what he was saying was anarchy, as the North had paid no attention to the Dred Scott decision in 1856. He also rejects any accusation that he was a race-baiter, saying he had never had an altercation with a black person in his life, though he had worked in the fields with them until manhood, and had not ever made an indecent overture to a black person, that he had financed some blacks through college and had defended them, without pay or hope of pay, for even capital offenses, and that but for health limitations, he would continue to do so. He says that he loved blacks but refused to have them forced upon him socially or to lose voluntarily his racial identity, and that if outsiders would recognize that basic principle of freedom, they could get along in peace with blacks "from now on out."
He does not say whether he had gotten any acquittals in his apparent time as a criminal defense attorney.
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